Gov. Asa Hutchinson took a moment during a Memorial Day ceremony in North Little Rock Monday morning to retell the stories of several fallen Arkansas service members awarded the Medal of Honor.
Veterans, active-duty service members, relatives and state leaders gathered under an overcast sky at the Arkansas State Veterans Cemetery. In typical Memorial Day fashion, star-spangled flags punctuated every headstone and lined the cemetery roadways. Bouquets of flowers were placed aside many headstones in a florid relief against the drab gray granite.
"Because of the sacrifice of so many, others get to go to the lake, others have picnics -- we enjoy this weekend," Hutchinson said as the clouds gave way to a penetrating spring sun. "And that's fine, that's good. Because those are the freedoms and joys of life that those we honor today have sacrificed for."
The governor went on to captivate the gathering with the stories of Arkansans who had received distinguished medals and awards.
Such as Jack Williams of Harrison, a pharmacist's mate 3rd class, who in March 1945 was serving on Iwo Jima during World War II with the 3rd Battalion, 28th Regiment, 5th Marine Division.
"Seeing a fellow Marine wounded on the front lines of battle, Williams braved enemy fire and ran to assist the wounded Marine, shielding the man with his body while dressing his wounds," Hutchinson said.
Williams was shot four times while helping the injured, and he rushed to tend to other wounded soldiers before being fatally shot by an enemy sniper.
In 1951, Charles Gilliland of Yellville was serving in Korea when the men of Company 1 of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division came under attack and were greatly outnumbered. Gilliland held his defensive position and stayed behind to provide cover fire for his retreating company. He was a month shy of 18 years old.
"He was never seen again," Hutchinson said.
Gilliland's family was presented with the Medal of Honor years later after he was declared legally officially dead.
In 1964 in Vietnam, Army Ranger Staff Sgt. Harold Bennett of Perryville was one of two Americans captured by Viet Cong guerrillas after Bennett radioed his company and advised against a helicopter rescue due to enemy fire. Bennett was killed in captivity after retaliating against his captors.
Last week the Senate passed a bill designating the Perryville post office as the Harold George Bennett Post Office.
The House has also passed a bill to name the Hot Springs National Park post office after Chief Petty Officer Adam Brown of Hot Springs. In 2010, Brown was killed in action during a raid on a Taliban compound in Afghanistan with his Navy SEAL team. His team was pinned down and taking heavy fire, but Brown charged the enemy's position to draw their fire and was killed, according to Hutchinson's retelling. Brown was awarded a Silver Star and a Bronze Star for valor.
"Now it becomes our responsibility to tell their stories, honor their service, and remember their sacrifice," Hutchinson said.
But the examples Hutchinson gave can only begin to illustrate the unabated courage and scope of loss of those honored, attendees at Monday's ceremony said.
Vietnam-era veteran Jim Elmer was born into a sharecropping family in Wisconsin before he entered the Air Force.
"I was a poor country boy, didn't have a chance to go to school, decided I would join the military because in my mind, I owed my country a tour of duty," he said.
But Monday Elmer remembered the bravery of other veterans, namely that of Nick Bacon of Caraway, the former director of the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs. Like Elmer, Bacon came from a family of sharecroppers.
Bacon, who died in 2010, was awarded his Medal of Honor for a firefight in Vietnam in which he exposed himself to enemy fire to take command of his platoon.
"I got my boot heel shot off, I got holes in my canteens, I got my rifle grip shot up, I got shrapnel holes in my camouflage covers, and bullets in my pot," Bacon was quoted as saying in Larry Smith's 2004 book Beyond Glory: Medal of Honor Heroes in Their Own Words.
"All that stuff, and I suffered a major explosion that everybody seen, blowed me in. ... They was tearing me up with machine-gun fire, and I just got blowed into a hole. They thought I was dead. They just stopped firing at me," Bacon said.
But one of Bacon's memories was especially important to Elmer: "[Bacon] asked himself, 'Am I going to die like a man, or am I going to die like a coward?' That part stuck with me," Elmer said.
After Elmer's retirement from the Air Force, he moved to North Little Rock and eventually served as the national commander for Military Order of the World Wars, a veterans coalition conducting youth-centered education programs.
"We believed in what we were doing, we like that we were doing it, we think it's worthwhile, so we're going to stay and do this for the rest of our lives," Elmer said of his Air Force career. "And we never regretted it, not even the bad parts."
Metro on 05/31/2016